


Like His Mother

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Other, Pre-Series, femme!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:14:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean stumbles into bathrooms, bleary eyed and tired after a night of digging up graves and getting dirt under his chipped nails, or after drinking too much coffee at the mom and pop diner with their greasy fries, he inevitably catches sight of himself in a mirror. Parts of himself are easy to see—a swath of dirt and sweat on the rise of his cheekbone. Smears of sunscreen already sweating from his pores because he hadn’t rubbed it in long or hard enough. Sunburn striped along the slope of his neck. Cut on his lip when he got the short end of a hunt. Ears burning from his fight with Dad or Sam or maybe that’s just from the sun too. He thinks there might be more freckles on his nose than before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like His Mother

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-series, femme!dean; sideways mention of John’s neglect, alcoholism, physical punishment, and brief mention of Dean experiencing undesired touching; character study regarding Dean attempting to connect to Mary.

When Dean stumbles into bathrooms, bleary eyed and tired after a night of digging up graves and getting dirt under his chipped nails, or after drinking too much coffee at the mom and pop diner with their greasy fries, he inevitably catches sight of himself in a mirror. Parts of himself are easy to see—a swath of dirt and sweat on the rise of his cheekbone. Smears of sunscreen already sweating from his pores because he hadn’t rubbed it in long or hard enough. Sunburn striped along the slope of his neck. Cut on his lip when he got the short end of a hunt. Ears burning from his fight with Dad or Sam or maybe that’s just from the sun too. He thinks there might be more freckles on his nose than before.

They say he has his mother’s eyes, but Dad keeps a faded black and white photograph snugged tight in his wallet in his back pocket, and even Dean isn’t fool enough to try to snatch it when Dad is weaving with alcohol, words slurring before he passes out on the wrong motel bed, smelling of gasoline and the stale smoke smell of a book of matches lit and dumped into a salted grave.

If he has his father’s something, nobody says. He tries to grow some scruff, but it comes in straggly and patchy. It looks silly, and Dad isn’t silly, so Dean shaves it off after Sammy laughs at him, shaves it until his cheeks are smooth.

Sometimes, people run their thumbs along those smooth lines of his cheek, sometimes lingering at his mouth. They never ask before they do. Dean tries to block his posture like Dad does, mouth slanted downwards, fist ready to swing, knees taking up too much space. It doesn’t work because nobody sees his father in him.

He memorizes the words of Stairway To Heaven even though Dad doesn’t like it when people sing along in the car. This isn’t San Francisco at the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dean. When Dad finds a new leather jacket, with the seams still sewn tight, with the pocket linings not threadbare from holding guns and knives and raw knuckled fists, Dad throws his old one to Dean because it’s not like they can just afford to buy him something that fits or something that's his very own.

He wraps himself up in that too-big leather jacket with cuffs that brush his knuckles and hems that kiss his thighs, the dad-smell of it—of that time he spilled beer on the sleeve, the old smell of motel bar soaps, too small and hard to get a good lather and disguising their lack of soapy sudsy goodness by smelling relentlessly clean, strong enough to burn your nose and taste it in your mouth, even if Dad wasn’t scrubbing your tongue off because you mouthed off and hadn’t muttered it quiet enough. In one of the pockets, Dean finds a peppermint candy with the red rubbed off, stale and crumbling and gross.

Did Mom wear leather jackets too? Or was she one for knitted sweaters, pale and pastel blues and pinks and greens like spring time. Dean leans in close to a bathroom mirror, spreads the lids of his mom-eyes (so they say) with this thumb and forefinger, revealing the inflamed red of too little sleep, too much caffeine, and too much sweat, and he looks older, old like his dad maybe, or maybe his mom when she stayed up too late, bouncing Sammy on her hip, unable to sleep.

He only remembers the white night gown (it scorched smoke-black before she burned). He sleeps in tees like his dad, white shirts tucked under button-up plaid, like his brothers did in the marine corp.

It’s not creepy, is it, if he wants to ask if Mom ever wore his white teed shirts when they were dating. When she stayed over for the first time. When they woke up together for the first time. When she made him bacon and scrambled eggs in the left over grease, feet bare and legs bare under his dad’s tee, too big for her but just right for them. That’s what people do in the movies, after all, and the soaps he watches in the day time, waiting for Dad to come back if he decided to take a hunt solo even if Dean was fifteen years old and could help out if Dad would only let him because Dean could show him how much he’s learned, how straight he could shoot, how good he’d be if Dad would only fucking let him.

When they drive and drive, with their heads pressed against the back seat windows, smudging the glass with their breath, Dean keeps his eyes open for things that may have been Mom’s. He looks for discarded lipstick tubes, old and sticky and faded, with just the very last of bit of the name vaguely legible — something siren red named something silly and corny like the devil’s shine or eve’s apple or passionate embrace.

Dean is certain that he saw those names in a drugstore somewhere, he is certain of it.

He doesn’t find anything that’s not their toys rattling in the dash and the doors and the floors. Did Dad pick the car vulture-clean, or was Mom really just that neat? Or was she really just that gone?

Or maybe she wore pink, daddy’s little girl pink (the only thing he wants to know about his Grandpa, is if Mary squared her shoulders and nodded yes sir for him too). Strawberries and cream pink. Don’t touch me pink.

He’s almost at the end of the aisle when he swipes a tube that’s in the bargain crate and stuffs it in his pocket before his dad can see.

Dean locks the bathroom door, runs the shower. He peels the plastic off, remembering to stuff it back in his pocket so that his dad won’t see it in the trash. Traces a waxy stroke on his wrist first because it’s safer there.

It’s a swath of pink against his skin. He does it again, writes Mary’s name in pink on the inside of his wrist, right over the pulsing blue of his vein.

Long sleeves and a thick banded watch can hide anything.

When he’s got the feel of it, the glide of it, he tries his lips. His hand is too heavy, so he blots with a piece of too-rough toilet paper he flushes down the toilet.

It doesn’t look right. He looks like a clown he looks silly he steps into the shower and turns the water too hard too hot his skin sears and accuses and he soaps his hands and washes his mouth until nothing comes back when he rubs his wrist his lips until Mary’s washed clean away. He drops his jaw under the spray of water to rinse out the taste of the soap. His eyes burn.

He wonders if Mom struggled with it too. He tries to remember if she’s wearing lipstick in the picture in Dad’s wallet.

Maybe she didn’t wear lipstick at all. Maybe she wore nail polish.

The next time Dad’s out on a hunting trip and leaves them alone for a week or so, Dean’s ready. A bottle of nail polish, green like his eyes and they say he has his mother’s eyes. He paints his toes under the flickering bathroom light while Sammy sleeps, and blows and blows air on them to hurry up and dry.

When he’s not sleeping with his boots on, he’s sleeping with his socks. Sometimes, he goes so long without seeing his handiwork, that he forgets about it until he’s showering the grave dirt from his body, the smoke and the ash and the salt but not the bruises, and he sees the water swirling around his feet, and he wriggles his toes in the suds so they flash green, so so pretty, pretty as a picture


End file.
